In the vacuum between Christmas and New Year I indulged in a few documentaries. With Benjamin in the safekeeping of residential care there was emotional elbow room. 

 

My apologies to young mothers with over stimulated children coming down from a steep sugar high. No respite for you.

 

A film about the Galapagos Islands caught my interest. Having zero aspirations to cross the southern border in my final two decades on this earth I can benefit from the armchair view provided by more stalwart adventurers than myself.  In fact that's a documentary I would watch. How the heck did a team of scientists get impeccable footage of ten thousand marine iguanas basking in the equatorial sun? Or the precise moment when a mother hawk pounced on a lava lizard racing for cover? Or the underbelly of a sea lion doing a double somersault? I'll wager that there was a confetti of rejected film left on the editing room floor, from when the photographer was a split second too late or out of focus. Not that there are actual editing room floors anymore. 

 

The waved albatross is a marvel of flight, having mastered the ability to glide ten thousand miles without flapping its wings. Males and females partner for life, even when it means waiting alone on a craggy cliff for days or weeks for the other to show up. Their reunion includes a beak clacking ceremony that sounds like a room full of Tinikling dancers stepping through bamboo poles. 

 

The giant tortoises that the islands are named for have managed to eek out enough nutrition from spiny cactus, or lacking that can survive without food or water for a year. 

 

One of the sensations that bubbles up when I watch is the urge to intervene. To reach into the screen and protect the blue-footed booby from the claws of a swooping predator. When the iguanas risk their lives by diving into the waves, I want to cushion their fall. But God has orchestrated creation to a mind boggling system of connection, that not only doesn't need my help, it is often hindered by human influence. 

 

The thought glides in, as if on a warm draft, that perhaps my life too is blessed by God's care. That even though my heart is hungry, I will not starve. That the young man who sits in solitude fifteen miles away, confused about why he is there or when he will come home, is precious enough to have a sliver of Omnipotence spent on his welfare. 

 

If only I can remain unflappable.